The Grapes of Opportunity; H. Lapp

The children were my sisters Lydia, Drusilla, Nancy, and Lavina, workingfor their own living and for their family.Theyweremigrantworkersin the bloomoftheiryouth.The demandsofthe fields had given them muscles and grit, but alienated themfromtheworldofparties,dances,theater,and dating.The fieldsand parentalguidancehad given them somethingtheywouldnot trade for anything else:self-respect,purpose,hope,and contentment. In the fields,you learnedrewardfor labor. Justthe term"migrantlabor"conjuresrepulsive ilnages in the minds of many people who have Hanna~app is a dairy farmer and writer in Cassadaga, New YOrk~This article is excerpted from a book she is writing abo her family and their experiences as farmers and farm wor ';Crs. heard of or seen only such examplesportrayed in John Steinbeck'sThe GrapesofWrath.The term is often associatedwithpoverty,shame,desperation, and helplessness.What'sfrequentlyoverlookedby those enjoyingmaterialeaseis the factthat happi nessisn'tmeasuredonlyby standardof living,and that poverty isn't necessarilyunfortunate in the minds of those involved.There existsamong hu man beingsa wide range in personalattitudesand prioritiesregardinglivingstandards.Some of this couldbe attributable to culture,some to personal feelings,andsometo the humancapacityofadapt ingto varyingcircumstances.It is importantto rec ognizethat these differencesin prioritiesare nor mal and acceptableby society.

In our own migrantlabor experiences,we were often appalled by the livingconditionsas well as carelessmannerofsomeofthe other workers.But we learned through firsthand experiences that pitying them to the point of·insistingon change was improper. You could break your heart over them, but they'd go right on singing,joking, and makingmerryamidtheir wantand filth.For many of them, this was simplypreferred over the disci plined, and to them, cumbersome, life of those whoplanaheadandsavetowardeverhighergoals. "Youguysaren't happytillyou got a million!"one migrant laborer observed of the more well-to-do society."Well,we just got a dolla', we satisfied." Tell my sisterDrusillathat migrantworkersare miserable, exploited people, and she'll draw her lipstightandfaceyouwithan ominousshineto the eye. "What are you tryingto say?" You'retellingthesepeoplethey are not capable of looking out for themselves,and most of them knowthat simplyisn'tthe case.Drusillawillunderstand what you mean when you talk about the physical strain for young children of long hours in the fields. She has felt the aching muscles and fa tigue, the heat, the cold, the rain. She has felt the pain of on-the-job accidents; once, a misstep under the weight of a heavy burden of peaches left her with a leg gash that required 13 stitches. Drusilla's message to those who sit in government offices concluding from such instances that children should therefore not be permitted to work is, "You haven't got the whole picture."

Perhaps these people have never felt the de mands of the fields and therefore cannot know the joy in completing a task or a day's work and being able to sit down basking in the bodily relief and mental satisfaction of having reached your goal. When you're a child, working with the encourage ment of a close family,the opportunity to expend great efforts toward your family's livelihood, and bring in cash toward your joint needs and dreams, does to your sense of worth what almost nothing else can do. To try denying a family this opportu nity sadly overlooks the individual desires and po tential of a child. It is an insult to his dignity,an in sult reinforced by child labor laws that have done today's youth more harm than the problem they were supposed to correct. I would not make this claim if I had not heard the figures of rising suicide rates among teens, not heard the tales of drug abuse, not seen the emptiness or even utter deso lation in the eyes of America's youth who are being told, "We don't need you."

MeasuringHappiness What we need to recognize with children as well as adults is that there are different ways of measur ing satisfaction and happiness. For example, sports for youth are viewed by most people as healthy recreation despite being at times extremely stress ful both physically and emotionally. Field labor can give children all the envied fitness, fresh air, and chance for achievement as sports. Those indi vidual cases where child labor is used to exploit and abuse children should be dealt with on an in dividual basis without casting an unfavorable shadow over the general concept of children as wage earners. The effort to relieve the so-called plight of mi grant workers has itself led to injustice by implying that a way of life which seems agreeable to one in85 dividual is intolerable to society. In his book, The Ground Is Our Table (Doubleday, 1966), Steve Allen does a good job of degrading the migrant worker by deploring his living conditions and then declaring him a helpless pawn of the farm employ er. Some of the practices he laments, such as an eight-year-old picking beans all day, women pick ing crops at the top of "teetering" tall ladders, and a family using crates and boxes for furniture, are things to which we ourselves can say, "We've been there." And we object to having society bewail our "plight" because of it. The arrogant presumption that every person desires or should have the same standard of living,or that there is such a thing as a universallyjust level of material comfort, has led to many problems, including the welfare system itself.

Mr. Allen does expose some instances of mi grant labor and living conditions that are unques tionably deplorable ..What he fails to recognize in addressing the problem is the capacity within an individual to affect his own condition in either a positive or a negative way. Federal programs to solve the problem too often add to the helplessness and degradation of the human beings they were designed to aid. Private measures to relieve pover ty are much more effective because they are more likely to encourage individual efforts. We went to Arkansas, not as migrant workers, but in high hopes of establishing ourselves as a family dairy operation. Strout Realty's ad for a cheap farm caught Dad's eye, and the fact that it was located a thousand miles to the southwest didn't dismay him as it did some of the rest of us. Mom did not resist much, though-Dad's ventures always held the possibility of good fortune.

"A dairy farm," the realtor called the 50-acre lot set high in the northernmost fringes of the Ouachi ta Mountains. At one time someone had evidently milked cows in a tiny,simple milking parlor on the place, and mountain plateaus offered a little flat land for farming. Dad was assured that there was sufficient cropland around and that there would be jobs available for the children-although he had to wonder where the jobs were, considering that there were few other habitations for miles around. It often occurred to Dad during the headaches that followed that perhaps we never should have moved away from our home in Virginia, where we had been able to maintain ourselves well. Yet he knew that his reasons for the change were legiti mate. His job on the farm had been fine for just 86 THE FREEMAN • MARCH 1990 himself,but the lack of work at home for the chil dren made the family wish for a better way: owningour owndairyfarm. It was the undesirable part of the migrantwork that prompted us to look for something better-and landed us in more of the same.

Back in the summer of '66 when Susan was born, Mom could not work away from our home in Clearbrook, Virginia, so Dad obtained three weeks leave from his farm position to take the three oldestgirls80 milesawayto producecountry in Chambersburg,Pennsylvania.When they were inquiringforworkat a tomato-packinghouse,they met Ray Nessone, who would give the children field work through that season and the next. Dad and the girls weeded and picked tomatoes until late September,with weeklybreaks at home. ApplePicking By apple seasonin October,Momfelt she could wean her four-month-old baby and go to Cham bersburg.Drusillaand sometimesLydiaaccompa nied her to the orchards and soon learned to pick as fast as she did. Drusillabuilt up her muscles,ac robatic skills,and self-confidencein the processof aiming for the highest possible count of bins per day. Momwasstilla littlestronger than her daugh ters and moved the high,heavy,and awkwardlad ders for them-but she let spunky, 13-year-old Drusillado the tops of the tallest trees.

The girlsseemed to cope wellwith heights,per-' haps from having had childhood experiences in climbing.Lydia,Drusilla,and Nancyhad been just 7 years old and up at the time when they used to help Dad catch pigeonsfor selling.They went out to neighborhood barns at night when the birds slept, and Drusilla and Nancy learned to climb high up under the bam roofs, huggingbig beams with both arms while carrying flashlightsin their mouths. Nobody told them they had to do it, but neither were they told they couldn't. Apple picking involves a variety of skills, the most crucialones being the positioningof ladders on springytree branches and havinga good sense of balance.Carryingthe monster of a ladder with out havingit carry you is one step. Then you need a good eye for the proper "set" in the tree, where the ladder will rest against a branch whileits legs sit firmly on the ground. Suspender-type straps support a three-quarter-bushel bag against your chest so that you can use both hands for climbing and picking.

You learn constantly to test your ladder's bal ance while your hands fly from apple to bag, and you explore the bounds of stretching and leaning from your ladder.Ladders do tip, slide,and flip,so you musthavesome awarenessof the closestgood branches to grab in the case of your feet suddenly kickinginto thin air. Drusilla learned to deal with a flippedladder by monkeyingdown its underside with her hands when she happened to find herself dangling underneath it instead of resting on top. She even unnerved our mother by drawingMom's attention to her feat with a spirited "ya-hoo!" as she went. Apple pickingis specialthe wayit'ssorough and so pleasant together. Tree branches whip your face, your shoulders sag from the weight hanging on them, and how your muscleshurt the first few nights after work! But by the time you're broken in, you're attached to it. It's generally less harsh work than tomato pickingwhere you continually stoop, and the occasionalwet and colddaysof late fall are kinder than the summer heat of tomato season. There are factors like crop condition, weather, and employee management that make the differenceofmiseryor pleasureon the job, and a good worker must take some of both. Mom and Drusilla sometimes put up with conditions that scaredoffmostof the other pickers,partlyin an ef fort to do their job well,and partly because you're anxiousfor work when you're far from home.

The next year, 15-year-old Lydia led her younger siblings in tomato picking. Early each Mondaymorning,Momtook the crewoffiveor six eager young bread-earners to the shanty at Ray Nessone's, left a food supply with them, and re turned 80mileshome to get the day'slaundrydone and serve the rest of the family. On Wednesday nightshe wouldmake a bigkettle of soup, and the whole familywould gather together at the shanty for supper, singing,and fellowshipinguntil it was time for the parents and youngestones to go back home to Clearbrook. It was an exciting experience for the young workers to practicefendingfor themselves,to dis cover how much money they could make if they worked really hard. Lydia,the crew leader, knew how to keep the younger ones in control while spurring them on with her own good cheer. "It's time you got up! The eggs are getting hard as THE GRAPES OF OPPORTUNITY 87 bricks!" might come her energetic call at six o'clock in the morning as she made breakfast.

They'd eat their Shredded Wheat, milk, and eggs, wash dishes, and get out to the fields at sunup. The girls' skirts would get soaked if there was much dew in the morning, for the tomato plants were big, and so were the weeds in some places. There'd be a half-hour lunch break at noon with Velveeta cheese sandwiches, fig-bar breaks in between, and water handy for when they were thirsty. Otherwise, they lost little time. The sun would become hot as the day advanced, and the weeds more prickly-weeds that were tall enough for a six-year-old like Barbara to hide be hind to crywhen things got too tough. But Barbara was big and strong in physique for her age, and even stronger in psyche, so she wouldn't be left out. Sticking with the crew from sunup to "can't see" most days,she'd aim for her goal of 30baskets of tomatoes-worth about four dollars. Some times she'd make it, and the pride would gush through her being to drown out her aches and pains. The physical drain on her energy would temporarily subdue her, but she'd march pretty tall in the walk home from the fields.Her hands would be almost as green with stain from the tomato vines as her brother Chris's and her big sisters' hands, and she'd scrub them long and hard with Mione soap. Even then, there would still be plenty of stain left to show Mom and the younger ones when they came.

After a supper of potatoes with canned pork and-beans, the littlest tomato pickers would scrub faces, feet, and legs, and drop right off into good, deep sleep in their bunk bed, so that when morning came they'd be ready for another day. D 88 Soviet Economic Reforms: An Inside Perspective by Yuri N. Maltsev T he crisis in the Soviet economy is now ap parent to both Soviet and Western ob servers. The causes and manifestations of this crisis have been cogently described elsewhere.1 The response of the Soviet ruling dass to the deteriorating economy and growing societal alienation was the program of reforms known as perestroika, which was initiated in 1985and signif icantly amended in 1987 and 1989. A number of scholars have provided interesting analyses of the perestroika reforms, drawing on the history of past attempts (in 1957, 1965, 1974, and 1979) to restructure and reform the Soviet economic system. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the problems involved in making the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market system. Understanding the challenges of this task is of crucial importance both for assessing the prospects for reform in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and for shaping a coherent policy toward events and reforms in these parts of the world.